GENESIS project: Synthesis and Policy Recommendations: Deliverable D6.5: GENESIS, Work Package 6

The GENESIS project set out, principally, to review and develop scientific knowledge regarding groundwater systems, and to develop tools for better integrated management of these systems with related aquatic and terrestrial groundwater dependent ecosystems. The objectives of the project over its five year duration also included development of indicator methods, and of integrated model simulations applied to a series of representative European groundwater systems that incorporate new components on climate, land-use and pollution input changes.
Special efforts have been made to link the project research to the ongoing process of implementing the Water Framework and Groundwater Directives (WFD and GWD respectively) – for example, examining the role of biogeochemical processes in pollutant degradation and the vulnerability of groundwater systems in the context of the GWD art.4(c) “appropriate investigation”. In addition, new methods were to be developed for assessing cost-effectiveness and the economic impacts resulting from changes in groundwater management practices across a range of the project case areas.
This report aims to set out the main conclusions from each of the constituent work packages under which work has been done for the project. It will then go on to detail those conclusions that have relevance to policy making at the EU level, and those that are most relevant to decision makers at the Member State level as they seek to implement the WFD and GWD. Work Packages 1 and 7 have been excluded from this report as they were not concerned with substantive research work.